Dorm help please?
 

I built a really nice dorm on a residential lot. I wanted to use it in not only my building version of the game but my playing version, and probably to upload it too.

So I converted it to a dorm using the cheat changelotzoning dorm.

Moved it into the Lots Catalog, following Carrot's tutorial on the Hullabaloo, at http://hullabaloo.sunsims.com/forum/...highlight=dorm

Then I renamed it as described there.
(Had to go out of the game to do this.)

Went back into game and it wasn't there.... boohoo. Now I remember why I don't usually make dorms. I mean it is not in the Lot Catalog, and as I had moved it there from game it wasn't visible either.....

Any ideas? Can I get it back? Reading on in that thread this is what happened to me before and no-one ever came up with a solution.

found a partial solution. I renamed it back to the old name cx_00000044.package - with the game still running!
Now it is in the refreshed Lot Catalog (after going into Verona main Neighbourhood Screen and back to the Uni.)
I still don't see how the _Permanent thing works though. But as I have FT will it stay in the Catalog anyway? Gonna zip it up and try to put in my other game and see....

My understanding is that adding _Permanent to the filename tells the game not to delete the lot from the lot bin when you install a copy of it. It also works to make it a read-only file.

Actually, unoccupied lots have stayed in the Lot Bin permanently (or until you delete them with the trash can) for several expansions now. Don't remember which EP introduced that change.

Personally, I'd use the Maxis Lot Packager and Clean Installer (unchecking everything but the lot segment) to get the building into the Bin....

I usually create my dorms the same way you did Sita. After I do the changelotzoning cheat, I move it to my lot bin and then put it back in the hood so I will have a copy. The ones I make always show up in the vacant residential, not the dorm section where the maxis made ones show up. Maybe yours went there.

One thing I always do is to exit and re-enter the lot in build mode after I use changelotzoning. It seems to need that before the game will recognize it as a dorm.

As best I can tell, though, that would not be related to the problem of having the lot disappear. :thinking:

Packaged and reinstalled dorms, even the Maxis ones, usually come up in the Residential section too.

But they still function as Dorms- not residential "rental" houses- right?

(Can you tell I have never ever made my own Dorms?)

-ZW

My experience is yes, they do

Hokay.

Made another, this one turned out to look more like a Faculty building than a dorm. After many tribulations I finally remembered how to rezone a building .... grrrr

The results are now available at SimEchoes.

Here's a picture.

Cana Institute

Yep, that does look more like a building with classrooms!

Cool, Sita! How the heck did you make the roof do that?

err...
let me think...
ok - first I used greenhouse roofs on part of it. (therefore Seasons) - gives a lot of extra light!
Then I put partial diagonal roofs on the back and front, opposite angles so they overlapped a little.
Then change the roofslope angle with the cheat to 10 degrees.
Then tile the rest of the roof with flat tiles and decorate with one of the Maxian tiny tiles on rooftiles and roofwalls (which are rather short in this case but I am allowed to be a perfectionist in my own houses!)

Maxis made roof tiles?

Um, I think I'll just download Sita's nice building...

you can put tiles on your roof lol

I am pleased with that one. Wanna play more with diagonal roofing.

But I DO wish we could make curved walls/windows. Those hexagonal towers which are the nearest you can get to a round tower are so Sims 1 ish.... and the round roofs could be more sophisticated too.

Ah well, maybe in Sims 3 we will actually be able to BUILD stuff that looks as good as the houses I can make in SL.

Yup, we can build lots of interesting things in The Sims 2 but being forced into a precise grid of squares does get frustrating at times!

Hey, speaking of The Sims 3, do the sims appear to be more cartoonish than they do in The Sims 2?

I think I have heard people say the same about Sims 2 compared to Sims 1. Faces are strange things. Psychologists say that we are so tuned to people's faces that oddnesses in animated faces are extra-noticeable. If you remember, Sims 1 faces were flat, and simple masks that never changed... I always avoid the faces that have big smiles because to me a Sim that grins all the time is intenssely irritating!

They don't look that different to me - but I have a form of face-blindness (mild prosopagnosia).

Somewhere, I read that animated characters should be a little cartoony, because they unavoidably will be a little off if you go for ultra realism. The slight exaggeration actually produces a more acceptable face for most people.